


Lamentation

by The_Dancing_Walrus



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Kink Meme, M/M, Ruins, ancient elves - Freeform, history is not good for solas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2015-06-15
Packaged: 2018-04-04 14:21:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4141032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Dancing_Walrus/pseuds/The_Dancing_Walrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'It was a ruin.</p><p>Once it had been a Rahassan, larger than the one he had grown in but-</p><p>But a careful eye that knew what to look for could pick out the patterns in the lay of the earth and what remained of the walls. If he closed his eyes for a moment, in just this spot, he could almost see it. The grand statues and paint of the rooms visitors entered through, the austere beauty of the-</p><p>It was a ruin.'</p><p>In which Solas is reminded of what he's lost and, for a moment, finds it overwhelming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lamentation

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for the prompt in the end notes. If you've been following/have read Vir Bo'Assan you may recognise some things about my headcanon.
> 
> Title from the Sassoon poem:  
> 'I found him in the guard-room at the Base.  
> From the blind darkness I had heard his crying  
> And blundered in. With puzzled, patient face  
> A sergeant watched him; it was no good trying  
> To stop it; for he howled and beat his chest.  
> And, all because his brother had gone west,  
> Raved at the bleeding war; his rampant grief  
> Moaned, shouted, sobbed, and choked, while he was kneeling  
> Half-naked on the floor. In my belief  
> Such men have lost all patriotic feeling.'
> 
> There's now a Russian translation, thanks to Izzy_Grinch which can be found here: https://ficbook.net/readfic/3608851 :)

It was a ruin.

 

Once it had been a Rahassan, larger than the one he had grown in but-

 

But a careful eye that knew what to look for could pick out the patterns in the lay of the earth and what remained of the walls. If he closed his eyes for a moment, in just this spot, he could almost see it. The grand statues and paint of the rooms visitors entered through, the austere beauty of the-

 

It was a ruin.

 

As they picked their way through they began to find…remains.

 

Adaar encountered them first, naturally since he was at the front. But he hadn’t been looking- none of them had been looking and so they discovered the first body when Adaar’s foot crunched through a moss covered cuirass.

 

He swore and hopped for a few minutes trying to dislodge it. Solas looked away.

 

“Great,” Sera muttered. “Dead elves.”

 

In one of the backrooms, not cut off so they likely hadn’t starved. The room beyond would have been…

 

The room beyond would have been the hospice.

 

Sera snorted and kicked at a lump in the carpet of moss. It came loose and clattered to a stop a few feet away. A Dar’Missan. The weapon of a dirth’ena enasalin. Made and enchanted well. Still silver and still sharp. It was-

 

“Solas-”

 

He picked it up.

 

It was just like hers-

 

“Solas?”

 

The voice was more insistent this time, insistent enough for him to remember-

 

That was his name. It was Adaar’s voice.

 

And this rahassan had been a ruin for a thousand years or more.

 

He looked up and found Kaaras stooped in front of him so that their faces were level. And he looked so concerned-

 

“Yes, my apologies.” Solas murmured. “How can I help?”

 

“Kadan,” Adaar began carefully. “You’re crying.”

 

-

 

He hadn’t made a sound and the rest of them, Cassandra, Sera- they’d just walked on and gotten about three rooms further in before they’d even realised he wasn’t there.

 

Kaaras had cursed himself for that because-

 

And then they’d found him, hunched and silent and hugging an old sword. And his hand had been wrapped around the blade as well as the hilt. And tears had been streaming down his face-

 

And the first thing he’d said, the first thing he’d thought was to ask whether _The Inquisitor_ needed help.

 

Adaar hadn’t a clue what was going on and it damn near broke his heart.

 

He’d called a halt to their exploration and they’d walked back to camp early.

 

He sent Sera and Cassandra ahead so that he could walk with Solas, put an arm around his shoulder-

 

He didn’t let go of the sword. He didn’t stop crying. And he didn’t make a sound.

 

-

 

They’d walked more slowly than usual, so it was dark by the time they’d got back. Which meant Adaar had had to pull Solas close to the fire after he’d pried the elf’s hand away from the sword’s blade-

 

It had cut as well. A thousand years old and it had cut.

 

“She had one just like it-” Solas murmured.

 

“I’m sorry?” Adaar had asked, instinctively because he hadn’t heard.

 

“She had a sword just like it.” Solas repeated, louder, clearer.

 

Enough for Sera and Cassandra to hear.

 

Adaar cursed himself.

 

“Hey,” Adaar said in what he hoped was a soothing tone. “It’s alright.”

 

“I _failed-_ ” Solas choked out. “I _failed her-_ and she died.”

 

Damn how was he supposed to stitch and bandage when-

 

“Shite.” Sera observed.

 

She got up and picked her way around to sit on Solas’ other side. She place one hand awkwardly on his shoulder. Solas didn’t seem to notice.

 

He breathed deeply and after a moment he seemed to have gotten a semblance of control-

 

“I’m sorry.” Solas murmured.

 

“Don’t be.” Adaar replied.

 

“Yeah.” Sera agreed. “It’s shite when your girl dies.”

 

It startled a horrible, bitter smile out of him.

 

“She was not ‘my girl’.”

 

Sera snorted. “Yeah. What was she then?”

 

He was silent for a moment while Adaar tied off the final stitch. Then he glanced across the fire and caught Cassandra’s eye.

 

“My right hand.”

 

-

 

He wasn’t sure whether she’d meant to find their camp or starve alone in the wild. She had no pack, no provisions: just a sword and a set of ruined clothes. She had staggered almost straight into their look outs, a look so grim it could put demons to flight. And silent, utterly silent-

 

The vallaslin had been indecipherable beneath her scars but even so she had smiled when he wiped them away-

 

For months she had followed him, wordlessly. She had observed. She had thought. She had rebuilt herself. Eventually she had spoken.

 

And when she had it had mostly been to tell him how, exactly, he was wanting.

 

She had been fearless, formidable-

 

His shadow-

 

-

 

Adaar held him close to his chest and Solas-

 

Solas breathed deeply and let him. Tried to find comfort in the heat and the way Addar’s body wrapped effortlessly around him-

 

But tonight he felt small.

 

Adaar’s thumb stroked along his collar bone and he waited and waited and waited for the moment he was going to have to lie.

 

“What happened to her?” Adaar asked, finally.

 

Solas closed his eyes.

 

“We were…fighting, a group of us. It was- It seems ridiculous now.”

 

Adaar gave him a gentle squeeze and so far- so far he had not lied.

 

“Our…conflict went badly. We thought that- That it would be safer for all of us if we separated for a short time. I asked her to take some of the people we were protecting to safety. I thought that if I accompanied them it would…make them targets.”

 

He sighed. “When she didn’t find me I started to search and eventually I found traces of what happened in the Fade. They’d attempted to seek refuge with some dwarves. The dwarves turned on them, they were all slaughtered. If I had been there-”

 

“Then you’d probably be dead to.” Adaar told him.

 

Adaar may even have been right, all of Thaig Cad’halash had fallen and the dwarves had been slaughtered along with the elves.

 

“I could have tried.” Solas said finally and it felt like an admission of defeat.

 

Adaar kissed the back of his head.

 

“I know it doesn’t make it easier, but you did everything you could.”

 

Solas sighed and put his hand over Adaar’s. Strange how much bigger it was. Strange to think that a man with horns like a halla’s could exist let alone that he’d end up in bed with one-

 

Strange what the world had turned into.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“It’s alright.” Adaar murmured and Solas let himself be held, be soothed, called Adaar ‘vhenan’ and responded to ‘kadan’.

 

He fell asleep in Adaar’s arms.

 

-

 

No one slept well that night.

 

Cassandra told the Inquisitor that she’d dreamed of her brother. Adaar had remembered the man who’d told his mother that Herah wasn’t coming back-

 

Sera had clenched her teeth and refused to tell them.

 

They’d all seen a woman. A brown-skinned elf with eyes as dark and hard as flint, her ears half-docked and her face a mess of scars.

 

She’d carried a sword.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Solas, grief, hurt/comfort, solas/any
> 
> So Solas tends to put up a front of calm, quiet elven apostate, right? but he comes from a culture that is basically dead, every one of the ancient elves he might have known at all is dead, and one of his spirit friends dies in game.
> 
> What I want to see is Solas' grief over all of this stuff emerge all of a sudden, over a seemingly innocuous stimulus. Maybe Sera or Dorian say exactly the wrong thing, maybe they run across the wrong artifact, either way, all of the pent-up sorrow Solas has comes out all at once.
> 
> solas can't even explain the nature of his distress because it would bring SO many unwanted questions, but his li and the other members of the inquisition do their best to try and help anyway.


End file.
